A solicitor who trained in Grimsby has been locked up for child sex offences after being exposed by an undercover police officer.

Richard Oxer, who was educated in North East Lincolnshire, was jailed at York Crown Court and has been placed on the sex offenders’ register for life.

At the time, he was working in North Yorkshire as a conveyancing lawyer, assisting clients buying and selling property.

The court was told police found 66 indecent images on his laptop, including 27 of the most serious kind, and 26 the least serious, the court heard. Among them were images of a child aged just three years.

While on bail for that, he joined a chatroom website and groomed someone he believed to be a 13-year-old girl.

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Richard Oxer groomed what he thought was a young girl in an online chatroom (Image: Getty Images)

But it was an undercover police officer on the site.

He admitted attempting to incite an underage girl to engage in sexual activity, attempting to cause the girl to watch pornography, and possessing indecent images of children.

Sentencing Oxer to three years in jail, Honorary Recorder of York, Judge Paul Batty QC said: “By your profession and by your calling, you are expected to uphold the law.”

He added: “You didn’t. What you did was anything but.

“This was truly revolting behaviour. You were attempting to seduce and, more particularly, corrupt a minor. That was your intention from first to last and all whilst you were on bail.”

Oxer, 31, of Alma Square, Scarborough, was put on the sex offenders’ register and was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order placing limits on his conduct on his release from prison. Both orders run indefinitely.